Last month, TTAC broke the news that GM was working on an American-made EV based on the Chevrolet Sonic, and that such a car would be a “compliance car”, used to meet certain regulatory mandates. Now, we have more information on the Sonic EV, including an idea of just how low-volume it will be.

John Voelcker of Green Car Reports (and one of the leading authorities on EV technology) is reporting that the Sonic EV will have a total production run of just 1,800 units. This is a shockingly small number, even for limited-run EVs, but the nature of the Sonic EV isn’t intended to be a successor to the Volt, or an extension of this strategy.

Instead, the Sonic EV is a play for regulatory credits by GM, which has calculated that the expense of doing a limited run EV built in the United States is worth it, since the credits they will ostensibly earn can allow them to offset other, more profligate vehicles in their lineup, like full-size pickup trucks and SUVs.

Currently, GM offers the Spark EV as well, but that model is built in South Korea, with American-made battery components. With a range of just 82 miles, the Spark will lag the Sonic’s rumored 200-mile range, though the $30,000 will be a fair bit pricier.

If “of the same logic” is intended to refer to “allow them to offset other, more profligate vehicles in their lineup,” then there’s certainly a difference worth considering… Toyota doesn’t have the same mix of “profligate” vehicles to offset.

Here’s a good example of a car you’ll find on ebay in 20 years, partially disassembled. The ad will read RARE SONIC EV, 1004 OF 1800 PRODUCED. Then under that will be an explanation that it ran until recently, and there are lots of spares in the back seat.

This isn’t GM’s fault. It’s the fault of every idiot that votes for people that think they’re smarter than markets. Cars like this are a tax on people that buy affordable cars that actually suit their needs. They’re subsidized by higher costs for everyone but the leech that takes the EV. I recently told a statist couple that they were reprehensible for taking heavily subsidized solar panels to power their desert home and refuel their heavily subsidized Chevy Volt. They are a professional and a union state employee with cradle to grave benefits that promise a standard of living double that of the people paying for it. If being green means they don’t have to pay their way, then who exactly does? They have a household income around four times the median. Hopefully, that means no food stamps. WTF does it mean energy stamps and car stamps?

A smaller percentage of the population is working than at any time in history. Food stamp use is at an historical high. I guess you are joking. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/15/food-stamps-under-employment/14108657/ from a liberal source btw

The 47% are people who will vote for the other party no matter what because they feel entitled/dependent/victimized–not that they actually receive more than they pay.

The last numbers I remember are that around 40%-45% of American households owe no federal income tax, but that’s a far cry from “receive more than they put in,” since there are many more taxes we pay than just federal income tax.

The number of unemployed is up. The number of people no longer in the workplace is up. Illegals are being ushered in by the tens of thousands. Almost all in these groups are on the dole. The numbers are most likely real and the reason is a political agenda.

Vogo, Mitt Romney was responding to a question about campaign strategy at a fundraiser. He was explaining that 47% of Americans don’t pay income tax, therefore proposals to lower income tax rates were not likely to help him win. He then went on to shoot himself in the foot with comments about government dependence and voting patterns.

The easiest way to “take in more than you pay out” in tax dollars is simple: retirement. Between Social Security payouts and Medicare coverage, it’s a pretty safe bet that most senior citizens are “taking” WAY more than they pay in. How many citizens fit this bill? Tens of millions.

But there are other ways too…and none of them fit the usual “sucking at the big bad gummint teat” image. For example, millions of college kids receive thousands of dollars in Pell money but don’t have nearly enough taxable income (if any) to offset the payouts. There are also tens of millions of disabled veterans, military and government retirees, and folks on social security.

Safe bet that the government isn’t making a “tax profit” on any of these people, but are they really “on the dole”? Given that most of them lived long, productive careers, and contributed to society’s bottom line in many ways (or will, in the case of students), not really.

NASCAR got 43 million last year, the Energy sector about 2 billion, Disney 150 million, Goldman Sachs got 1.6 BILLION subsidy to help finance a new HQ. The list of money going to so called capitalists is not quite what I call the right thing to do in a free market. Tax breaks for off shore earnings and to the Agricultual sector is also something to think about.

Your logic is compelling. But you have to factor in the subsidy of the externalities of conventional power sources and automobiles. It’s possible that the costs avoided of extra lung and heart disease, and greenhouse emissions outweigh the cost of the subsidy to the solar collectors and the Volt. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I haven’t done the math.

You must be popular going upto people and telling them in blunt language that they are “reprehensible” and we wonder why you are not married!

They are paying tax, one was private sector, so automatically good!

It is an interesting fact that the majority of the states that are net takers of Federal money are solid republican states like Mississippi, whilst the majority of those that are net givers to the Federal treasury are Democratic states like Massachusetts and Connecticut. Maybe we need to call those states worthless and other names?

What do you think the odds are that most takers in places like Mississippi are republicans? It is an interesting fact that Mississippi has the highest % of blacks of any state. How many of them are republicans?

You know Mike, as an independent, I have asked for some “blue pays red” data, like what kind of spending. If it’s for social services, that’s one thing. But when you consider a lot of heavy spending is located in the southern shipyards. At $456,000,000 a pop for the LCS that is certainly going to slew the numbers a touch. Even the aircraft carrier at $18,000,000,000 is going to affect the numbers. (Even though that only represents 37 hours of Federal spending.)
Although VA.is now blue. Should we shift that?

Fair point about defense spending and some of the big projects. Although from what you say it sounds like they are disproportionately built in the south even though the rest of the country have ports. So they would still be subsidized.

It would be good for more data, but it is not unlike the tin hat contingent to latch onto one “fact” and extrapolate.

Yeah the built the Fit EV in an exact number just for fun and lease them at way under cost to move them just for fun, it is not a compliance car.

The actually dropped the lease price to get them moving and that lease price includes insurance and what little maintenance they will need. Of course they are going to do just like GM did with the EV1 and S10 and what Ford and Toyota intended to do with the original RAV4 EV and Ranger EV and crush them when the least is up.

What really annoys me is that they put these credits and incentives in place to push the manufacturers to offer these cars to consumers. I understand the underlying dislike of government funds for this type of thing, but regardless if you support it or not, at least you should be able to reap the fruit of such programs.

But here we have the companies taking advantage of the incentives and the consumer doesn’t even get to buy the product. 1800 is nothing, 1000 of them will go to politicians or connected insiders at GM, of the remaining units, as it was said before probably only for California and even then only LA I am sure.

The rules for the credits should insist on the product being available everywhere to all who choose to afford them.

There is no other way for the EPA and CARB to ram this down people’s throats.

There is little market for cars like this.

The next step will be mandatory minimum market share of cars like this. The only way that will happen is that if you buy a Camaro or an Escalade or some such high-end “gas guzzler”, you will be forced to take delivery of a piece-of-junk EV like this along with it. The piece-of-junk EV will have no resale value (due to overwhelming mandatory production volume with no market for them) but everyone will be happy except the consumer.

“When part of the government incents automakers to develop new technology to secure energy independence, this is a liberal, evil waste of taxpayer money.

But when another part of the government spends 100X that amount on R&D to create new ways to kill people, that is military spend which is good?”

Someone can – indeed many people do – think both are bad.

I’m not aware of mnm4ever speaking out in favor of military spending, either, so it seems an odd non-sequitur to bring it up.

But more importantly, *yes*.

1) Incentives like that distort the market and thus hide or cover *people’s real preferences and desires*, which would otherwise be shown by *price and demand signals*.

“Supply and demand” only shows us what people want vs. available resources [the *entire function of economics and markets*] if we don’t try to fake up “preferred’ results; if we do that the noise makes it impossible to fulfill those desires as shown, because the signal the market gets is one with an artificial, un-desired-by-the-purchasers weight distorting it.

2) For limited-government Constitutional types, note that there is no enumerated power of “making the markets pick the outcome that somebody would prefer” or “saving gas whether you like it or not”.

While there is one – fundamental to the very existence of a State, in fact – of armed defense.

Note also that a whole lot of military R+D is about ways to keep soldiers alive and to kill *just the enemy* rather than civilians.

Unless you want to stamp your foot and Outlaw War with a *fiat*, you’re going to have to deal with it existing [and even if you try the former, it won’t work] – and if it exists, well, it’d be nice to have smart bombs and planes that are hard to shoot down, rather than having to resort to saturation bombing ala WW2, especially for the civilians *on the other side*.

Sigvald,
Let’s review your assertion of armed defense as a function of every state. Which scenario makes more sense to you?

1. The US continues to guzzle gas, at rates roughly double that of other developed nations (Europe, Japan), and to ensure its continued economic viability invests heavily in defense spending, especially around the Gulf. This creates a situation where radicals from that region react negatively to that presence, forcing us into continual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which take literally decades and trillions of dollars (not to mention lives) to end.

2. The US cuts its oil consumption in half by conserving energy and investing in alternatives to fossil fuel. Defense spending remains stable and a decreasing percentage of GDP, war spending is avoided, soldiers don’t die.

Vogo, as a taxpayer, I want a sufficient level of defense spending that we can find new and efficient ways kill as many people as needed without putting us or our allies at risk. Everything else is BS. Because that is what eliminates war. And please read the history of the area from about 1100 AD to 1919 with heavy emphasis on the Ottoman Empire. I apologize if this came off sounding rude. I tend to be a bit direct when I am on the phone.

Isn’t California the whole reason for this boondoggle, it would make more sense to just tell California the number of jobs that will be lost when GM closes down their dealerships in that market.
Maybe they can blackmail the idiots to revise the laws.

Honestly there has to be car companies doing math on finding which is cheaper, complying, or closing the doors.

The 1800 number tells me that they’re planning to build them for just a couple of years for just the California market, to meet the current CARB mandates. Starting in 2018, they’d have to sell it in 8 states, including NY and most of New England, but they can avoid that by dropping the EV and selling a hydrogen vehicle, which they would only need to sell in CA and not the other 7 states.

Full disclosure: I have a Spark EV. Fun car. The instant torque is addicting. Real-world range is about 90 miles, and it’s suitable for at least 90% of my driving. The gas car now hardly gets driven. When the lease is up in 2 years, the Sonic will be at the top of the list. With a bit more room and longer range, it will cover 98% of my needs. And with solar panels locking in the cost of “fuel,” which I can produce myself at home, I’m looking at 3 cents per mile, with essentially zero maintenance.

I’m a bit surprised by the 200 mile range, but it does get them into a new category of credits – 5 instead of 3 per car sold, so they won’t have to sell as many. Borrowed from a poster on the Chevy Spark EV forum:

2015 Chevrolet Sonic EV: The Official Car of Compliance in the Age of Hope, Change and the New GM. Sponsored by the 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt XFE: The Official Car of Corporate Beancounting in the Age of Fear, Loathing and the Old GM.

Which is what is stupid about CAFE. Foot print factors was a huge bone thrown to the Big 3 for protecting the huge profits on pickups. These compliance cars are a byproduct of this stupid line of thinking. Mileage standards should simply be based on just that – mileage – and nothing else. One category for cars and SUVs – you know, vehicles for ferrying human cargo, and one for pickups. No other differences.

Big pickups need to be thrown a “footprint” bone. You make them tiny and industry/utilities/business/self-employed/etc are then less productive and burning way more fuel with more trips to accomplish the same tasks. Also, pickups get used commercially then double as family trucksters. And big pickups may be be the only vehicle, wearing multiple hats, for large families with a farm/mom-pop/etc.

But families with 3+ kids can’t really be forced into subcompacts. What then?

That is exactly what the footprint basis for CAFE is all about the larger the footprint the lower the required fuel economy. It is a big reason that the compact pickup went away, they don’t get enough higher MPG to justify their smaller footprint.

@28-Cars, Scoutdude – The “footprint” rule applies to cars just the same. But it’s not the same. If the Chevy S10 was alive today, it would’ve had to get about 27 mpg hwy (EPA sticker, not CAFE). Possible, but cutting it close.

Still, the current Honda Fit, with roughly the same footprint as the old Chevy S10 (about 41 sqft), needs about 31 mpg hwy for 2014. It get 37 mpg hwy. Definitely more lenient on small pickups than small cars.

Except compact pickups died out and grew to larger proportions about a decade before CAFE laid out the future mpg requirements for light vehicles.

So today’s midsizers like the Tacoma (at about 46 to 62 sqft footprint) are crossing into or overlapping fullsize footprint. The F-150 is at about 58 to 75 sqft of footprint, but now that the reg cab midsizers are going away, they’ll start at around 56 sqft for the extra cabs.

While fullsize pickups may only be required 25 mpg hwy by 2025, midsizers may only be required a few mpg above that. Or about 28 mpg hwy. Both should be easily accomplished with gas engines.

The 75 sqft F-150 is the not_so_common “Super cab, long bed” (8 ft bed). The crew cab and 6.5 ft bed are 73 sqft and the most common F-150s are 67 sqft.

“The Sonic EV will also be built in Michigan, which will allow GM to gain regulatory credits for selling a pure EV that is also made in America. The Chevrolet Spark EV, which is built in Korea, is not eligible, and has a range of just 82 miles.”

I’m trying to figure out why where a car is made is a factor, and if so when was that introduced. It didn’t used to be that way. I’m pretty sure the Kia Soul EV isn’t domestically produced. Hence I’m not convinced country of origin means anything to the ZEV Credit program.

CARB requires credits for clean-air vehicles. If GM can get more credits/car for building it here, then they don’t need to sell as many of them. Since their clear aim is to sell the minimum, it makes sense to switch to the Sonic. They currently get 3 credits/car for the Spark. A 200-mile, US-built Sonic would get 5, maybe even 6 credits. Sure, they’ll lose more per car, but not have to sell as many.

200mile EV is a statement about how GM feels about Hydrogen. Its also likely to be far more cost effective for GM to make a 200mile EV than a 200mile HFCV. This is GMs fighter vs ToyoHondHyun Hydrogen. Price wise it must be less than a Tesla Gen 3. Range wise it should be more than a Nissan/Infiniti LEAF gen 2 (150mile EPA).

GM is about full range PHEVs (EREV in GM talk). Nissan probably makes a profit on their EVs but prices them so that others can’t make a profit at the same price.

Its quite likely that this is LG’s version of a Li/Mn rich Li ion chemistry (just like ENVIA was). As such its probably not mature enough for wide use, but too important to ignore.

Lutz vision was that between 200+mile EVs with rapid charging and 40+mile EREVs there is no room for Hydrogen.

This is pathetic, typical, and GM. Nissan leaf gen 2 is gonna blow it away and be made in earnest. EV cars are almost here. Once the rydan battery takes off its game over for ice and that’s probably within just a couple of years. Who is gonna buy a gm ev when they pull this kind of crap?

Are you going to say the same thing about Toyota and Honda? It isn’t like the Rav4 EV or Fit EV are anything but low volume compliance cars. The Fit EV was limited to less units than the Sonic EV, while the Rav4 EV isn’t limited to many more.

I can’t find production numbers that are any good on the Spark EV, but it looks like, from adding up enthusiast reports of sales numbers, that they might have sold as many as a thousand of them by now, total.

As of last year (first numbers I could find), GM was selling 60,000 full-size trucks a month.

For what it’s worth, they don’t think that a gallon burned of E85 produces as much pollution/emissions as a gallon of gasoline.

(I don’t necessarily believe that. Pollution from ethanol is different, but I’m not convinced it’s better, and CO2 emissions really should include well-to-wheels, so if energy expenditure to grow the corn is high enough, that won’t be better, either.)

The water required in corn farming is enormous, as well. And if you don’t get enough rain, you have to irrigate or lose your crops. The actual process to make corn ethanol, iirc, isn’t that efficient either.

All the subsidies disappeared because the artificially low pricing couldn’t be kept, there was a huge glut of ethanol, so much so they were talking about going to 15-30% minimum blends in all gasoline to dispose of it and force everyone out of older and into new cars by ruining all engines in existence.

I’m not sure how it is today but parts of Europe used to have VAT on cars. If the engine was less than 2L it was 12%, if the engine was larger than 2L it was 30%. It penalized people driving large vehicles, you had to pay. Of course Ford would just build an F150 with a 1999cc engine with four turbochargers making 500HP…

This fact is what burns me. The physical size of the engine means nothing. It’s the performance that matters.

Anyone who has been in a large business knows all about metrics, and they also know that measuring the wrong thing is worthless. If you measure the right thing, people may still game the system, but it will still be a better starting point.

In other words, if they want to reduce fuel consumption, tax fuel consumption. If they want to reduce pollution, tax pollution. Or, they could tax vehicle weight (because that’s a primary driver of both). Sure, car companies will optimize their cars for the tests like happens in the US, but even that is better than putting 45+ psi boost into a 1L engine and thinking it’s ‘efficient’ because it’s small.

How sad. GM management is saying: “Let’s build an electric car, doesn’t have to be all that good, just good enough that 1800 EV faithful will take off our hands. As long as it’s green the zealots will overlook a multitude of sins. The boys in accounting have it figured that we need to unload precisely 1793.5 of these things to make our CAFE numbers, so we rounded it up to 1800.” This gets justified by assuming they’ll be money losers, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy when you determine in advance to build a ridiculously small number. Heaven forbid they should set out to build the best EV that normal people could afford and try to be leaders and not followers.

It seems EVERYONE is scared to take the Leaf on head to head. I keep waiting for the smoke to clear or the mirrors to shatter. Every passing day makes it more clear that Nisan is winning this segment legitimately, no smoke, no mirrors.

O5lgt, I doubt there is much EV market to take from Nissan. The problem is battery cost exceeds battery benefit unless you live in congested parts of California where EVs get solo access to HOV lanes. The US government could cut the EV tax credit in half and people in urban California would still come up with the money to buy access to the HOV lane. Here in Dallas, Texas we’re starting to sell access to the HOV lane directly independent of whatever car you choose to drive. http://www.lbjtexpress.com/

I disagree. The problem is batteries cost a lot *right now*, but they pay for themselves over their lifetime due to reduced fuel costs.

For example, let’s say a Leaf is $5k more (due to batteries) than a comparably equipped ICE compact car that averages 30 mpg. At $3.50/gal, fueling that car costs $17,500 for 150k mi. Assuming the Leaf gets ~2.65 mi/kWh & electricity costs $0.12/kWh, its fuel cost for that 150k mi is under $6800. That’s a net benefit of over $10k for the Leaf.

I don’t live in CA, but I see Leafs all over where I live. They don’t benefit much from HOV access if at all. They do get to use the charger parking. I’m pretty sure it’s cost benefit on the prepaid fuel, especially as a hedge against rising gasoline prices.

It’s pretty pathetic that manufacturers are essentially forced to mash together a car that few will want or buy to meet the requirements of the ever-so-overreaching Federal government and one of its crown jewels, the EPA.

Government doesn’t realize that the market will dictate the outcome, as with other things. We don’t need the EPA to force car manufacturers to build cars to get specific mileage because of the current fuel prices. People will (and are) naturally gravitating towards the fuel efficient models and manufacturers would still scramble just as quickly–without the mandates, no less–to satisfy the demand.

So, are fuel efficiency mandates necessary? I don’t see why they would be. It just creates more headaches and cost for everyone involved.

Truth be told, the EPA in its entirety isn’t necessary, either, among many other agencies.

So you would be all for letting the market dictate the outcome if I set up an asbestos removal facility next door to your house and made a huge amount of money by scraping asbestos off other materials and scattering it into the wind, sometimes just tossing it over the fence, right? We don’t need any regulations, just wait for my customers to stop paying me to kill you and your family. All good, right?

PentastarPride, I’m more concerned that CAFE is transitioning from nudging manufacturers to build more efficient but also more expensive cars where fuel savings eventually pay for extra complexity to diminishing returns where added complexity and cost don’t save enough at the pump to make sense. Transitioning from 6 cylinders and 4 speed automatics to 4 cylinders and 6 speed automatics, both with sub-8 second 0-60mph, while using significantly less fuel is an acceptably good outcome. CAFE nudging manufacturers to go further with 8 and 9 speed transmissions, CVTs, electric power steering, turbochargers, direct injection, hybrid drivetrains, etc. may be pushing complexity into the market faster than the market can absorb it. Throw too many government mandates and weird incentives at manufacturers and we get stuck with another malaise era of unreliable cars that suck.

In addition to the national security concerns, greater vehicle efficiency is important to keep the economy going. Our economy depends upon cheap energy to be vibrant. As we see transportation fuel rise in price there is a need to be more efficient in order to maintain the same economic activity level.

The problem with the CARB rules is they are easily gamed by the manufacturers and are pretty much ineffective in achieving the goals of the program. CARB need to fix those shortcomings to help prop up our economy.

Even if we had cars that ran on unicorn farts using zero fossil fuel and produced zero emissions, we would still have pollution & the subsequent health problems, we’d still have issues with energy independence, trade deficit, etc. At some point driving the effects of cars to zero while incurring accelerating costs doesn’t solve the problems it’s supposed to nearly enough to be justified.

IIRC, most of the US’ energy consumption goes to power buildings. The EPA should have a more holistic approach that includes *all* factors and their interplay instead of merely setting a target for cars that’s independent of all other sources of pollution & energy use.

Does everyone realize that the United States sells coal, crude oil and refined products and natural gas to the rest if the world? These are markets, with prices, that drive production. There isn’t some patriotic effort to produce all of our energy independently of the test of the world on an effort to fight terrorism. The sale goes to the high bidder.